


the eyes of the forsaken

by PikaCheeka



Series: until the stars die [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Don't copy to another site, Failed Relationship, M/M, Memory Loss, Slow Burn, rape fantasies, takes place in canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 22:34:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18019721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaCheeka/pseuds/PikaCheeka
Summary: As far as he is concerned, Ignis Scientia only ever believed one lie in his life.Ten years later, he learns it never was one.-Ignis doesn't hear a word Talcott says on the drive back to Lestallum. He doesn't feel the seat beneath him. Doesn't smell the exhaust or the rain nor does he taste the Ebony he absently drinks. For once, the lack of a single sense does not distract him, because he is entirely gone. The truth is curled around his esophagus and it will be made manifest on his tongue soon enough.I know, I know, I know who you are. What you are.Because he knows that the hurt that created Ardyn was not recent. Regis could not have hidden a brother, nor could he have hidden an uncle, so easily. Ignis had been too nosy a child. He knew far more about the King than Regis realized. There was not even a bastard child hidden somewhere, except perhaps himself, as he has sometimes wondered. No, Ardyn is something else, somethingancient.-Sequel tothe eyes of the divine.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally finished Ignis’ side of the sequel! This is split into two chapters for length. Writing this series has been quite an experience, and I really want to thank everyone who’s read, kudoses, bookmarked, and/or reviewed any of the pieces in it. This is the first time I have ever truly tried to write a romance of sorts; Ardnis got me in a way few ships do. I will definitely continue to write for this ship, and I might throw out a collection of scrapped scenes from this (seeing as the Gladnis side angst seems popular!). I don’t think I’ll be letting this ship go for a while yet!
> 
> (As I started this series (and this fic) long before anything to do with the Prologue anime or the DLC, I am keeping in line with the idea that Ardyn wandered for 2000 years, as I believed when I first began writing it. It’s pretty insignificant to the plot though! The chess scene, oddly, existed before we learned Ardyn likes chess, so I left it as-is.)

The first time Ardyn appears, Ignis senses something as he reaches for his apartment door, a familiarity, a whisper of dread. He doesn’t dwell on it too deeply and so throws it open to step inside. Ignis’ emotions since Altissia, even more so since Noctis had left them, had ranged across a map of valleys and trenches. He has scarcely smiled in months, and as used to despair as he is, the thought of something sinister lurking in his apartment barely crosses his mind.

"You really are blind then. What a pity." The voice rolls over him, alluring and deadly and softly mocking, and Ignis freezes, a surge of fear rushing through him. He doesn’t feel afraid very often, but _that voice_. From he who has been at the root of everything.

He starts to back up, to reach for the door behind him, but he feels just as much as he hears the footsteps, the wind from his coat as he moves, and Ardyn has him by the wrists before he can even catch a breath.

And he draws them to his face while Ignis flinches. "Let's play a little game, shall we?"

His stomach lurches; he doesn't want to know what Ardyn would consider a game, doesn’t want to know why he was _in his apartment_ apparently waiting for him, and he feels desperately alone. Ardyn had retreated into Insomnia after Noctis had entered the Crystal, and though rumors were rife, nobody had actually _seen_ him in months. Were it not for the ever-growing night that had all but consumed the sun but for a few minutes a day now, Ignis could almost have believed that he’d _gone away_ somehow, somewhere.

But no. He’s _here_.

"I've noticed you aren't as touchy as most blind people I've had the pleasure of meeting. Life's going to be difficult if you don't get over that."

He doesn't like where this is going, doesn't like how Ardyn said the word _'pleasure'_. And he especially doesn't like how Ardyn now pulls him forward and presses Ignis' hands against his face.

He recoils in horror, drawing his fingers back as best he can but the older man has a vice grip on him. He knows Ardyn is terribly powerful, that he could snap his neck without even blinking, but right now he only wants to get _away_ from this monstrosity that stole his eyesight and his king. He doesn’t like this familiarity, doesn’t understand it. "Ardyn! I don't-"

"Please stop being such an incorrigible stick in the mud." He sighs melodramatically. "Now tell me. Who am I?"

Ignis tries once more to pull back, but Ardyn’s grip is viciously strong and he can't find the leverage to resist him, backed against the wall as he is. And so he relents. He relaxes his palms, roves his fingers over Ardyn's face. Or not. Because now Ardyn has more stubble. He has a thin scar down his left eye and cheek, another on his forehead. His nose is thinner and there are fewer stress lines around his eyes.

"Gladio..." he says softly. It isn't the first time Ardyn has put this face on.

"Thought I'd start you with an easy one. Those scars are hard to mistake. Now try another."

Ignis swallows hard; he knows Ardyn must have an ulterior motive, knows this is likely an exercise in sadism, but he's curious now. He strokes those cheekbones, now suddenly delicate, the lips now fuller.

"Aranea." Aranea the Dragoon, the first and only woman who ever flirted with him.

"She's ever the fun one. You know she grabs mens' genitals when she's mad at them? She's quite brutal, leaves bruises that last a week. Ah, ah, you're blushing now. Let's move on then, shall we?"

Ignis nods once and bites his lower lip. He doesn't know why he's blushing, why he suddenly feels hot. Because of Aranea? Better to not think about it. He moves his fingers again, now finally tentatively rests his palms against those cheeks, now less smooth, less full. Messy hair covering narrow eyes.

"Noct," he breathes. And he _aches_. Yes, there is sadism in this game.

"Come now, don't be so sad. I'm sure he'll do something with his hair when he comes out of the Crystal. Now who?"

He sighs and obeys, because while Ardyn is clearly being cruel now, he isn’t physically harming him. "Prompto."

"He's a cute one, isn't he? His cheeriness gets a little irritating though. Did you know he had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to play some video game on his phone with him while I had him chained up in the Keep?"

Ignis snorts, almost laughs, and feels himself relax. "That doesn't surprise me." He strokes the face beneath his fingers now, a little slower than before. So strange, to have such intimate human contact. "Cor."

"Everyone's favorite asshole, but the only man I've ever met who can drink me under the table. Now one more."

He finds himself curious about what sort of situation called for Ardyn and Cor drinking together, but is unwilling to ask. No need to encourage him. _He's evil_ , he reminds himself as he continues to feel around his face. "Uhm... I can't place this one."

"Noctis. In ten years, assuming the Crystal doesn't chew him up and spit him out."

He recoils, tries to pull his hands back again but Ardyn’s fingers are as claws. "How..."

"You do realize I’m old enough to be your father, no? I've seen Regis grow up enough to...make an educated guess. One last one."

_I don't want to play this game any longer._ "You said this was the last."

"Oops. This is really the last one. Slowly now."

Ardyn, simply Ardyn. The strong jaw, the faintly hollow cheeks covered in rough stubble, crows’ feet around his eyes and a few wrinkles around his mouth. He feels it then. The similarities. Noctis, aged not ten years but twenty, thirty. Can he be...? Impossible. He swallows hard and forces himself to ask. "Are you... Did Regis... have a brother?"

"Ah ah, you are a clever one."

But he doesn't answer it, and somehow Ignis is all right with this. He's hovering at the precipice of something. He finds himself cupping Ardyn's face now, running thumbs over his cheeks.

And then Ardyn does something inexplicable. He grabs Ignis' wrist, holding his hand still, and turns his cheek, pressing his face hard against his palm. Ignis can feel his sharp inhale, hear the low growl emanating from his throat. And he's backing off so abruptly that he nearly throws Ignis back.

"Tah tah, for now," he says it with a mocking lilt to his voice, but Ignis knows something is wrong. Not that it matters. He wants him gone.

"Don't come back," he says sharply. His hand burns where Ardyn had pressed his lips to him. _Leave, leave, please leave._ He's never felt this sort of fear before. He remembers Ardyn asking if he would go with him, if he would abandon Noctis and join him instead, and he’s suddenly very, very afraid that Ardyn is still interested in having his own strategist.

He can feel Ardyn's gaze on him, but he says nothing, and then Ignis can feel his absence.

He can feel his absence like a void.

  * ✷  .  ✦ 　 　 ✵  　   .  ˚  　 ⊹ 　　 ✵   ✺ 　 ✷   　　 　 ⊹  ✹  *  ˚ 　　　　 　 ✫



Ignis Scientia falls apart in pieces. He’s aware that something is missing, that a part of him used to exist and no longer resides inside of him, but every time he believes he catches sight of it in the darkness, it slips between his fingers and back beneath the shadows. It isn’t simply the blindness, the aches and pains that now control his body, but those things certainly exacerbate it, just as they make him aware of himself in ways he’d never been aware before. Because losing one sense forces the others to overcompensate, and Ignis Scientia has always been slow in acknowledging his own desires.

He knows he’s losing himself, knows that he’s lost his way, when he finds himself distractedly thinking of Ardyn when touching himself at night. He’s not jerking off, not exactly, not when his joints ache too much to bother with any repetitive activity, not when his sadness is so great that he can’t find the energy to even try, but he does touch himself sometimes.

Ardyn, Ardyn, _Ardyn_. He wishes he would rape him.

The thought is dizzying in its foulness, so disgusting that Ignis shivers and immediately releases himself, rolls over and buries his face in the pillow and hisses in frustration. _But I want to have sex and I just want it to be a quick release._ After feeling those hands on his face a month or two before, he can’t get him out of his mind. It infuriates him, that Ardyn has managed to invade his dreams somehow. _Of course he would. He’s the Usurper, the one who has brought darkness to the world, the one whose evil is so complete that my king, my beloved king, must sacrifice his life to stop it. Of course he would invade my dreams, my thoughts, as long as I draw breath. He is nightmare incarnate._

But not like this. Not like _this_. These are only nightmares in that he is ashamed and disgusted with himself that he has such thoughts.

  * ✷  .  ✦ 　 　 ✵  　   .  ˚  　 ⊹ 　　 ✵   ✺ 　 ✷   　　 　 ⊹  ✹  *  ˚ 　　　　 　 ✫



"You really ought to let others help you now and then."

Ardyn again.

He has a power akin to the Lucis Caelum ability to warp, though Ignis is loathe to admit the similarities, especially after touching his face. Except it apparently isn't tied to weaponry, because he can appear in Ignis' apartment whenever it suits him. _Mmm, it's very mysterious, isn't it?_ was all Ardyn has said when he'd asked.

“Stop doing this.” He doesn’t quite know what _this_ is. It’s the third time Ardyn has appeared to him in private, yet he refuses to explain himself. Ignis’ terror had quickly given way to anger, then consternation, and now already a tired resignation, as if he’s already grown accustomed to Ardyn’s eccentricities and rudeness in another lifetime.

“Do you think I’m going to suddenly start listening to you? Or anyone. I’m not very good at listening to anyone.”

_No shit_. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” But there’s no force behind the words.

“Mmm, probably. Though once you rule the world, there’s remarkably little in terms of…pressing matters. Especially because demons are so obedient. To me anyway.”

The way he says _pressing_ and _obedient_ is offputting, obscene somehow. Ignis wishes he would stop turning every sentence into innuendos, and he also wishes he would stop _hearing_ what might not be there. The man who murdered the Oracle, forced the king to enter the Crystal, spread plague over the entirety of Eos, and brought the sun to its knees is now sitting in his kitchen trying to offer him advice. He has bigger concerns than the way certain words sound on Ardyn’s tongue. _I should be more afraid of him._ But he isn’t. He’s simply…irritated.

“I don’t need help.”

“You just dropped a glass and now you are standing there in your bare feet, unable to clean it up and afraid to move lest you cut yourself.”

“I dropped it because _you_ showed up out of nowhere.”

Ardyn hums softly, clicks his tongue before stamping his feet as if to announce it before he stands. "I would never dare tell anyone. Is that all it is? Are you so ashamed to need help?”

“I…”

But Ardyn rolls over him. He can be unstoppable once he gets going, Ignis has learned quickly. “Or is it because you don't want to burden any of your friends?”

“Don’t you have your own messes to clean up?” he snaps back viciously, unwilling to respond. Ardyn strikes too close. _A burden_. He would rather be dead than a burden. Gladio and Prompto have suffered enough and are currently bearing the weight of the world on their shoulders while Ignis flounders in grief. He knows they have been out fighting demons nearly every day in recent months, knows Gladio now works with Iris and Prompto with Aranea to spread their skills out. But still they both drop in on him nearly every day and act like nothing is wrong. They understand his grief is different, understand that Noctis was not only his friend and king, but his brother and somehow, even his son. They understand that while they have both suffered injuries, Ignis lost his vision, and while he rallied enough to fight for Noctis, he’s struggling to adjust to his new life. _I can’t burden them._

“The palace in Insomnia is rather large. If I make a mess in one room I just stop using that room. Sometimes I even smash things up for fun.”

Ignis sees white behind his burned eyelids. Rage. He can just imagine him, Ardyn Izunia, laughing with delight as he smashes cups, throws chalices out windows and tears through portraits, paints over murals and sets fire to furniture for no reason at all. He doesn’t know how he knows that Ardyn can be petty, but he knows this, and he refuses to rise to the bait. “I can’t burden them.”

He feels it before he hears it, so fast is Ardyn Izunia as he backhands Ignis across the face. The smack is hard, but not as hard as Ignis knows it could be. Still, it unbalances him, startles him enough that he falls. The broken glass digs into his palms, his knees. An ancient form of punishment, he remembers suddenly, forcing someone to crawl over broken glass, to grovel before he who they have offended. _To grovel before the king._ When was such a punishment last used? Centuries, easily. He finds himself trembling even before Ardyn kicks him, though there is little force behind it as he digs the toe of his boot into Ignis’ side to hold him still.

“Ignis. It’s been six months.”

“I can’t do it,” he balks, grits his teeth and feels the burn of tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “I’m too…” 

“Stop being such an insufferable cunt, Ignis,” he snarls, the emotion in his voice potent and unexpected. “Your King needs you.”

The glass slices into his skin when he shifts his weight. “ _Which_ king?”

He wishes he could take the words back, but they are already gone, simmering in the air between them as Ardyn stands, stunned, before _commanding_ him.

 “Get up. Go forth.”

Ignis feels the pressure on his side recede just as he does a wound tear open anew.

  * ✷  .  ✦ 　 　 ✵  　   .  ˚  　 ⊹ 　　 ✵   ✺ 　 ✷   　　 　 ⊹  ✹  *  ˚ 　　　　 　 ✫



He resolutely refuses to think back on that night, when he kneeled on broken glass before Ardyn, while _Ardyn the Usurper_ stepped on him and commanded him. He heals his cut lip and the bruise on his cheek to ensure no one asks questions, but he leaves the one in his side for reasons he can’t understand. And that night he touches himself properly for the first time since… he can’t recall when. _Some time ago._ He jerks off and he circles his saliva-slicked fingers around his entrance, bitterly wishing he had some lubricant. He remembers fingering himself without it once and being miserable for it, though he can’t place the when or the where. But in the end it doesn’t matter, because his body is unexpectedly sensitive, far more so than he remembers it being. He’d touched himself so rarely before he went blind primarily because of how poorly his body reacted, the constant stress he was under muting what little sex drive he might have had. Apparently that has resolved itself.

And as he wipes his fingers off on his sheets, uncaring of the mess, he feels a growing unease in his bones, one that gives way to an inexplicable rage.

The fury he feels the morning immediately following drives his strength in the field, and he takes down several tonberries with shocking ease. It’s only then, as he stands over the carcasses and wipes the blood off his daggers, that he begins to feel better. Braver. Stronger. He doesn’t want to think too deeply on that, doesn’t want to think of that rough voice ordering him to do the very things he himself ordered the king to do. _The King. Who is the King but a Lucis Caelum? And who…?_

It’s several weeks before he feels confident enough to call Gladio and Prompto up, ask if they are up for a hunt, as he’s heard that several Psychomancers have been terrorizing an outpost north of Steyliff Grove. He can register the surprise in their voices, but he can also sense their grins, and he feels a flood of relief surge through him. Maybe, maybe his life can return to some semblance of normality.

He waits for them at the Meldacio HQ and tilts his head when he hears the arrival of Gladio’s car. If there was any arm of the law left, Prompto would have had his license revoked by now, which means Gladio is forced to be the designated driver.

“Ignis,” Gladio’s voice ripples through him and Ignis finds himself arching his back ever so slightly. He hasn’t felt happy, or even content, in months, but somehow _this_.

He can sense where the car is based on the sound of the gravel crunching as it comes to a halt, can estimate where the door handle will be. He only misses by a few centimeters, and he can’t help but grin as he opens the door and slides into the front passenger seat. “It’s been some time, hasn’t it?”

“We all needed our space after two months together.”

“Yea, you _both_ snore sometimes,” Prompto piped up from the backseat.

“And you drool, as I recall,” Ignis shoots back, feeling something loosen in his veins.

“Hey,” Gladio to the right. “You really are looking better now. What happened?”

“Hm? Nothing. I just…got up one day and realized I wasn’t doing the very thing I told Noctis he had to do. So here I am. Going forward. Living.”

“Maybe you should start dating again, yea?”

“What?” _How does he know what I did last night?_ He shakes his head once and shudders. It takes him a moment before he realizes instead what he’s talking about. The only time in his memory he’d gone off with a woman, one he was admittedly a little terrified of, had been months and months ago. Nearly a year. “Oh, Aranea? We went on a few hunts together. It was hardly a romantic endeavor.”

Gladio makes a sound of confusion, and then Ignis senses Prompto move, hears the soft sound of him punching Gladio, likely a nudge in the shoulder.

“Please, no conspiring to hook me up with her. She seems the type to lure a man in and then snap his neck with her thighs.”

“ _Wow_ , Ignis,” Prompto yelps, and Ignis can only imagine his blush, bright red to his ears.

“Not quite the answer I was expecting, but I’ll take it. Got that on the mind, eh?” Gladio laughs. He _only_ laughs, though Ignis knows in another world, another lifetime, he’d have thumped him on the back so hard his glasses fell off. There is no rough-housing with a blind man.

“A bit,” he says softly, but he doesn’t resist the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. _Get up. Go forth._ He flicks his wrists and catches the welcoming weight of his blades. “Shall we commence the hunt then?”

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"I have a proposition.”

_Get out of my kitchen. Get out of my life._ He wants to attack him, wants to lunge at him and claw at his face. He considers it, knows that while he is sure to be off-center, he should at least be able to hit him. He could also simply throw himself at him, punch and kick and scream, something he hasn’t done since he was a tiny child. It’s oddly appealing, the possibility of tearing apart this man who has destroyed his life so perfectly. Destroyed it and helped rebuild it, if only by accident, by kicking him and grinding his knees into shattered glass, by taunting him, _commanding_ him. Ardyn _does_ something to him. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Lovely. I could care less. Do you want to see light one last time?”

“I can’t see,” he says petulantly. _Don't talk about my eyesight like you had nothing to do with it._

“Uhm. I am well aware. But you can feel the light, can you not? There will be a few minutes of light in a few days, a comet close enough to Eos, and then it shall be gone forever. It will only shine long enough to reach one place; most of Lucis will see it, but only a few will be able to feel its warmth. Precisely two, because if we show up, I’m sure any hapless fool who figured it out will leave.”

Ignis freezes. Light. He hasn’t felt light in ages now, over a year. Manmade lights do nothing, and not even fire makes a difference to him. Without the sun, the moon has ceased to shine, and stars are too far away to matter. But a _comet_. If it is powerful enough, close enough, he could feel it. He knows where it must be. “The Disc of Cathuss.”

“Let me take you there," Ardyn says, with enough force and emotion to make Ignis lean away from him. 

It’s the first time Ardyn has mentioned them doing something together, and Ignis’ mouth runs dry as remembers that night in Altissia. The night the collapse of the known world began, and he was plunged into a private darkness for the rest of his pathetic, mortal life _. Come with me_. He wonders what would have happened had he gone with him. He wonders if he would have retained his eyesight, if he could have found a way to save Noctis, if he could have convinced Ardyn to change his mind. Or if Ardyn would have just tortured and brutalized him, if he would have killed him immediately. Or if he would have done _this_. Whatever _this_ is. Ignis finds himself trembling.

He doesn’t respond, but Ardyn prattles on. Something about enjoying stargazing, something about meteorites and comets, and Ignis half-wonders if the older man had somehow found out he used to love looking up at the stars, that he used to be able to identify hundreds of constellations, and now he is mocking him. He only half-wonders, because the rest of him knows that Ardyn is excited right now, that he wants, inexplicably, to please him. "If I say yes, will you shut up?"

Ardyn laughs.

-

When the appointed time comes, Ignis is sitting on the couch in his living room, waiting. He knows Ardyn is grinning, smirking at the very least. “You always were a curious one.”

It irritates Ignis how Ardyn acts like he knows him. The older man had likely been stalking Noctis for decades, which invariably meant that he had been stalking Ignis as well, but that isn’t the same as _knowing_ someone, and Ignis bristles at the comment. “You don’t know me.”

“I don’t? I know you have loyally stayed by the prince’s side since you were a child. I know you were the driver and the cook for everyone. I know you were quite the little bitch whenever I ran into his entourage. I know you put the Ring of the Lucii on, fully expecting to die, to protect your friends.”

“I fail to see how you get curiosity out of any of that.”

Ardyn laughs softly then. “I have lived longer than you, in a land that prioritized military strength and diligence. I know the hearts of men well, and I can put things together.”

Ignis scowls. “Let’s go then.”

He balks when they walk out onto the street and Ardyn gently directs him towards a car; he doesn’t want to be trapped in a car with this man, but Ardyn’s casual _suit yourself_ when he hesitates makes him angry, and he opens the door needlessly hard, slams it shut, and sits in silence during the forty-minute drive.

The drive is forty minutes, but the walk is thankfully short, Ignis painfully aware of how rocky the ground is. He’s grown more sure-footed, more confident, and he doesn’t even use a cane regularly anymore, but he’s more conscious of his blindness around Ardyn, more anxious about avoiding any mishaps lest he see.

Because he _can_ see, and that quietly enrages Ignis.

When Ardyn gently touches his arm, gesturing for him to stop, he crouches down, ensuring he isn’t going to sit on anything horrible before he relaxes. Only once he’s seated does he strip his gloves off, remove his visor, and sigh softly.

“Can you only feel the light on bare skin?”

“It’s stronger on bare skin and,” he hesitates, unsure of how much to tell him, but he’s already been reckless tonight. “Where the scars are, even though I’m certain most of my nerve endings have been burned away in those areas.” He raises his left hand to show him, spreading his fingers. There’s a burn scar in the shape of the ring on his finger, streaks of lightning tearing down the back of his hand. They go all the way up his arm, down his back and around his torso, but he’s never shown anyone anything beyond the wrists and he isn’t about to start now.

“Huh,” Ardyn breathes, the sound vaguely derisive. “How kind of the kings of yore to grant you such a paltry gift. Scars that sense light. Don’t undress any more though.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he quipped. “Please shut up and let me enjoy this.”

He tenses slightly when Ardyn sits beside him, but he maintains a respectable distance and Ignis relaxes after a moment. He remembers how menacing, how massive and terrifying, Ardyn had been when he had fought him what seems like a lifetime ago. He’s less of that now, though his power has only grown since darkness had consumed the earth, so much so that it radiates off him.

The minutes drag on, and Ignis begins to wonder if Ardyn had lied, simply to be cruel, or if perhaps it has come and gone and the light was too weak for him to sense it. He can hear Ardyn shift once or twice, hear the soft tapping of his phone, but he thankfully doesn’t speak.

“Oh,” he whispers suddenly, the scar on his finger itching faintly just before the sensation washes over him.

He laughs, lifting his face upwards and raising his hands, leaning into it. He forgets Ardyn is there, forgets why he has those scars, forgets even that he is _blind_ , and he is standing up without thinking, rolling up his left sleeve so to reveal more of the scars to capture the light. It’s been so long, _so long_ , and he can’t stop laughing, the euphoria consuming his sorrow.

He stays in this position long after the feeling has faded, reveling in the way his skin feels so impossibly alive, those damaged nerves beneath his scars momentarily flaring to life as if he’d been forgiven. It makes him want to weep, and he almost doesn’t care if Ardyn sees the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He’d been blind and in darkness so long now he’d forgotten what the light felt like.

“Will there be another one?” he finally murmurs, not daring to turn his face towards where Ardyn sits.

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Probably not in your lifetime.” There could so easily be a threat there, but there isn’t. It’s merely a statement.

“Then…” He wavers. He shouldn’t be grateful, shouldn’t be thanking this man for allowing him to feel the world’s last hint of light when he is the one who enshrouded the world in darkness. And yet, he had made an effort to show him, so unnecessarily. He reached out to him, in the darkness that has become Ignis’ whole life, a presence so potent he feels it stalking him with every breath. _He wanted me to forget my blindness if only for a moment._ “Thank you,” he whispers.

His hand brushes against the older man’s arm and for a moment, his fingers settle on him, only to have Ardyn jerk his hand away as if Ignis had burned him. “That’s quite enough.”

It startles him, and it somehow _hurts_. And it makes him feel ashamed. “Ardyn. What do you want from me?”

The silence drags on so long that Ignis begins to doubt he will reply, and he wonders what the older man’s expression is before he heaves a great sigh. “Nothing, Ignis Scientia. Nothing at all.”

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His memory is fragmented. He knows this, knows things are missing, but he doesn't know what those things are. He's never had his mind fail him, never forgotten anything critically important, and the loss terrifies him. He thinks perhaps it is related to the prophecy. But there's _more_. Because the gaps go further back. Ever since he left Insomnia, things are lost, and he doesn't dare ask. Gladio already thinks he shouldn't be in the front lines, shouldn't be risking his life when he's blind, shouldn't try to be the king's retainer any longer, not that there is much to do when the king is absent. Gone. Ignis cannot lose more value than he has already lost, cannot lose his sense of self.

But these things, these absences, weigh heavily on him, because he is different now in ways he can't describe and doesn't dare explore too deeply. His body is no longer his own, and not simply because of the blindness, not simply because the lingering effects of the ring now live in his bloodstream, causing pain and exhaustion where they never once existed, grievances that have lessened as months stretch on into a year and beyond, but never truly go away. Not because he has visions, because he has somehow become a seer. There's something personal, deep, far beyond the touch of the Astrals, the Kings of Yore. Something _his_. And he lost it.

Gladio is the first to say something. "It’s been a long time now and you're still not the same." It's an accusation, one exhaled after a growing frustration.

_It's because I am different, he wants to snap back._ But he can't say it, can't admit it. _I am not who I once was. Someone else dwells within me and I do not know his name._ Ignis has become two, as has his memory, and he doesn't know why. “No one is the same. Nothing is the same.”

“You know what I speak of.”

“Do I?” he hisses, surprised at the anger in his own voice.

“Do you miss it?”

The words hit him hard. _Miss it._ I _miss_ something. His gut lurches and a shudder goes through his body. _I am grieving but for what I do not remember_. “It?”

“The ring. The power it lent you. You’ve grown so much stronger since you wore it and yet…” he trails off and sighs. “I know it’s not the same. But you couldn’t have saved Noctis from the Crystal even with the Ring, so don’t think you could save him now if you had it back.”

The ring. And Ignis knows it is not an object that he misses, not a manifestation of power in his veins, but _a person_. He has never been so sure of anything, though he does not know how, and his jaw aches in the way that can only indicate sorrow as he softly breathes, “Yes. I miss it.”

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“What is _that_?”

He nearly drops the towel in surprise, stumbles forward into the sink. “Ardyn!” he snarls. Because he’d calmly, mysteriously appeared in his apartment just as he’d been about to step into the shower. He wonders if he should be afraid, given the older man’s increasingly obvious interest in him, the reason behind which he had never given up on trying to understand. “You can’t just show up whenever you want.”

“And who is going to stop me? You can’t run me out onto the street without clothing. Now that?” And Ignis knows that he is referring to the bruise, or what he can only assume is a bruise, on his back. He’d been fighting a ziggurat the other day, had been thrown hard, very hard, hard enough to almost certainly have fractured a rib. But Prompto had been hurt worse, and Ignis only has so much energy for healing these days.

“A difficult fight,” he shrugs.

“Do you need help?” he says then, unexpectedly, and Ignis flinches. _Again, again, why must he always ask this?_

He hesitates, wavers, unsure of how much to tell him. _He hasn’t harmed you yet, not that you can make any sense of it._ “I still have a lot of pain. It’s difficult sometimes to…heal now, so it’s better to reserve that for others.

“Not this shit again,” he quips. “What did I tell you last year? Don’t tell me the great Ignis Scientia, Demonscourge, can _regress_.”

“I’m the best healer I know. I can’t let on that I…” _Can’t fix this wound._ “Need help with this sort of thing. It’d be bad for morale.”

“So you sacrifice your health for your image?” There’s something vicious in the way that he says it, something feral and hopelessly personal.

Ignis winces. “I’d like to think it’s for _others_ , but I suppose there’s some truth in that.”

“No different from any other healer I’ve known,” he says then, and unexpectedly his voice is calm again, serene and lazy.

_He’s either insane or this matters to him._ For one wild, wild half a moment, Ignis wonders if Ardyn had ever been a healer. The fact that he even offered to help him is odd, after all. But insane is much more likely. So he says nothing, only reaches for the towel as he turns away from Ardyn, turns his bad side away from him, his bruised side, his _scarred_ side.

"Don’t be ashamed of scars. I have plenty of my own.”

_Definitely insane._ Ignis scowls again, then turns to face him fully for the first time.  

And Ardyn inhales, not quite a gasp but _something_. Though he must have seen his arm that night of the comet, he clearly hadn’t expected so much damage.

Ignis shivers as he feels the older man’s eyes on him.

"The ring left its mark everywhere, didn't it?"

The scars, not only on his face but his left shoulder, his arm, and part of his torso. There's even one vein that extends nearly as far as his crotch, curling around his hipbone to come to a stop just above his public bone.

He knows that's what Ardyn is staring at even before he whistles. "That was a close one."

“Mm.” He makes a vague noise of agreement, unsure how he feels about Ardyn staring at him there.

"Can I...?"

He hesitates, worries his lower lip. _Yes, yes, yes._ It’s been a long time since he’s felt any human touch beyond feeling faces, something he has only done a couple of times since Ardyn forced it upon him. When he had his sight, when Noctis was around, when they were happy, physical contact was normal. The four of them were always shoving each other, throwing arms around shoulders in the field and legs over laps on the road, sometimes even testing the strength of hotel beds by seeing if they could all fit in one whenever a two-bed room was unavailable. That life is gone now, and though Prompto and Gladio are always ready to offer him a guiding hand, they treat him as if he is made of glass. He wants Ardyn’s touch desperately, but he wants him to be rough, casual and nonchalant. He doesn’t want him to ask permission. _I am not as fragile as the world thinks._ “No.”

Ardyn, unexpectedly, obeys.

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The truth is incremental, a slow awakening that feels more akin to falling into a nightmare. It's something that attracts the monster, whatever it is.

_I learned something. I am something, someone._

He’d heard a rumor as a child, a rumor that he was not a Scientia but a bastard son of the Lucis Caelums, of King Regis, no less. And it did explain things. Why he was adopted by the king at such a young age. Why his real parents seemed to have no interest in him. Why his uncle was so standoffish around him. Why Noctis felt more like family than friend. Why he had such an affinity with magic. It explained much of his life, and he was enraged for it. He confronted the king about it when he was nine years old, and he’d laughed and laughed himself to tears. Ignis learned then that he was indeed a Scientia and only that, and this came as something of a relief to him.

But now he is questioning that again.

Because the first vision was not a mistake. It was not something he had merely because of his proximity to both Noctis and Lunafreya at the same time. It was not something that Pyrna lent him as a dying gift. It was something _inside_ of him.

He has his second vision two years after the fall. Noctis, in the Crystal, emerging from the Crystal as the crack of dawn grows behind him. There is a cruelty in this, that Ignis can now see only in dreams, in visions. He will never see Noctis again, never see anyone or anything ever again. Because it took years for the pain from the ring to finally fully recede from his body, but the blindness persisted and at this point, there is no longer a hope for it.

They come increasingly often after that, every few months. And visions of Insomnia, shrouded in darkness and over-run by hordes of demons. Burnt out shells of cars and the dust of concrete covering the streets. And visions of an Insomnia he never knew nor can even guess at. The Insomnia of the Ancients, a world without trains or cars or skyscrapers, a world without even the _Wall_ , yet somehow recognizable as Insomnia.

And he has visions of _him_. In Insomnia. On the throne. An Insomnia and a throne that he at once recognizes and doesn’t recognize. 

It’s only after the sixth vision that he realizes what he must do.

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He blurts it out one day, or one part of the night, when he and Gladio are shoveling fries into their mouths at Kenny’s while pretending that their fingers aren’t dripping with grease. Somehow, the few surviving restaurants have become all the more important, and citizens have been eagerly donating what little extra food and money they have to them, if only for a place to congregate and pretend that the world hasn’t ended. Ignis knows there are others in the restaurant, others right in the booth beside them, but he doesn’t care. He’s heard enough personal conversations by now to know that ultimately, nobody cares what anyone else is thinking about.

Perhaps it’s that that makes him say it, what makes him say what’s been on his mind for years when he lies awake in bed, when he touches himself. Something he’s done alarmingly often since Ardyn had kicked him to the ground in his kitchen years ago now. He sometimes feels as if he’s experiencing a second puberty. “I’m a little lonely at night.”

Gladio laughs, and Ignis can just imagine him shaking his head. “So proper about it. What about Aranea? She still likes you quite a bit, I think.”

Aranea. The name has been pushed on him often enough by now, though she continues to be remarkably indifferent to him. _Still_. He’s suspected for a long time. "I like her well enough, but..." he can't say it. Can't say that she isn't a man and that's enough for it not to work.

"I know, I know. Was just saying."

This surprises Ignis, because he remembers Gladio being oblivious in the past. _When did we discuss this?_ "Oh..." is all he can say.

"Don't know why you were so weird about it for so long."

_When did we talk about it?_ There is a rising panic now, because he remembers nothing of speaking of this secret he has harbored for long. “How long have you known?”

He laughs softly now. “I guess it wasn’t that big a deal to you then, eh?”

_What wasn’t a big deal? Did we do something and I just don’t remember? Did we… Impossible._ Ignis feels sick, but he resists the urge to push his plate away. Better not to insult Gladio.

“Happened a long time ago, when there were still four of us. We were on the trip.” Gladio always talks about those days with Noctis awkwardly. “If you don’t want to talk about it, whatever.”

_I don’t want to talk about it, whatever it is, don’t want to talk about how something in my head is no longer working properly and I may or may not have slept with you at some point in the recent past but I can’t remember what happened. Not with you._

And unexpectedly, against his wishes, he remembers Ardyn only a few weeks ago, tempting him. _It’s clear that you hate me, so would it not be a suitable punishment then? To burden me with your needs?_ Ignis had attacked him in a fit of rage, had summoned his daggers and had prepared to kill him, only to find himself unable to. But now the thought, not of killing him but of burdening Ardyn with everything he can’t burden his friends with, is suddenly appealing.

“Ignis. You’re spacing out.”

“Mm,” he responds absently, because all he can think of is Ardyn hissing in his ear, threatening him, kicking him, taunting him. It is suddenly so very intriguing, this thought of telling the man he despises more than anyone in the world of his anguish. Dangerously appealing.

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“You can sleep in the bed, if you like.” He says it innocently enough, indifferently, but he is keenly aware of the rustle of fabric, the slight creaking of the couch as Ardyn shifts his weight. He can feel his stare on him.

“How can you get your beauty sleep if you’re on the couch?” Because clearly Ardyn does not need beauty sleep. The man has slept on his couch a half a dozen times by now, somehow operating on the same internal clock of night and day as the rest of the world, despite being the one to ruin it all.

“We can share the bed,” he shrugs. _I’ve been alone, alone for so long, and I can’t do anything to resolve the problem because I don’t know what it is that I’m missing. I want to move on, not that I want to do it with you but at least I don’t care about wounding you_. His own thoughts surprise him. _When did I become so cruel?_

He doesn’t expect Ardyn to agree, doesn’t expect him to do anything but laugh at him. But Ardyn stays. He doesn’t only stay. He’s the first to walk into the bedroom, the first to strip off a couple of layers of clothing and crawl beneath the sheets while Ignis continues to scour the news with only one earbud.

Because he listens to Ardyn in the other room at the same time, listens to him stretch out on the bed and mess around with the covers, rearrange the pillows and sigh and mutter something under his breath the way so many older military men do before drifting off. Probably a cacophony of foul language he’d accumulated throughout the day.

_I want to burden you, want to tell you what I want, what I need, because I can not tell my friends and I am lonely, so lonely in this silence._ He wonders what the man would do if he told him, wonders if he’d _offer_. He wonders what he himself would respond with. He’s the Usurper. So he can’t sleep with him. But if Ardyn takes him by force, _well_. He won’t stop him. Ardyn is certainly capable of it, and Ignis feverishly wonders if he could somehow provoke him into it.

The thought angers him enough to rip his headphone off and storm into the bedroom, unnecessarily loud and urgent in his actions as he strips off his pants, his shirt, leaves on only boxer briefs and a tank top. He’d showered in the morning and now doesn’t even bother to wash his face or even piss before tapping the foot of the bed, feeling that Ardyn is on the right side, and half-falling onto the left.

“I don’t share well. You might end up on the floor,” Ardyn says, low and haughty. Unexpectedly petulant, like a scared child who was given a treat and expects it to be taken away from him. _Strange_. But Ignis ignores it.

“I’m used to sharing the bed. Four of us and usually only ever two hotel or caravan beds.”

“You let a few weeks of road trip define an awful lot of your life,” Ardyn snorts. There is something in the way he says it that is almost self-deprecating, and it gives Ignis pause _. Are you really so different? What days and weeks do you live in? What memories help you push through the darkness?_ But he doesn’t want to appear interested.

“Noct had nightmares growing up,” he pulls the blankets tightly around himself and pointedly turns away from Ardyn.

“Some king.”

“Shut the fuck up.” The words sound delicious on his tongue, somehow refreshing. _I don’t think I’ve said that to someone in years_.

He surprises himself by falling asleep.

-

He tries to think about Gladio, about Gladio’s arms, the width of his back and the crooked bent to his grin, the wrinkles around his eyes and the strength of his thighs. He has a lot of the things Ignis _likes_ , after all.

Gladio wouldn’t object, he is certain. _He knows I like men. He doesn’t seem bothered by it. He’s always trying to help me, help Prompto, find a partner. He might think it’s weird if I think about him, but he wouldn’t be angry. I’m not_ using _him, just thinking about him. We might have even fucked for all I know._ But no, he doesn’t think it was that. He wouldn’t forget that, and anyway Gladio wouldn’t be quiet about it.

Except he can never think about Gladio for long. Instead he thinks of _him_. Ardyn, only a foot away from him on the same bed. He can’t tell if Ardyn is asleep or not, the man sometimes breathes so slowly as it is, and he certainly doesn’t want to ask. They have their backs turned towards one another, as if the older man feels the same as Ignis and wants to stay as far away as possible. _You wish, Ignis_. It only occurs to him then that this was probably a bad idea, to invite him into his bed. He hadn’t really expected Ardyn to acquiesce. _He should have refused, as it is. How crazy is he to agree to this, and how crazy am I to have asked?_

He tries to think of Gladio, but as he drifts off to sleep, it’s Ardyn he thinks of. He hasn’t seen him in years, has never seen him in a positive light, not even the night he stayed at the caravan with the rest of them and spent nine hours trying to make everyone as uncomfortable as possible, but he can remember him so _well_. He’d known since he was a teenager that he preferred men, men larger than him, of a certain build and roughness, and he’d known all along that Ardyn was unfortunately that _type_. It didn’t help that right away, Ignis had known how clever Ardyn was, how intelligent and cunning.

But Ignis has been slow to learn that he is also attracted to cruelty, to brutality. And in his dream he provokes Ardyn, pushes him again and again until Ardyn throws him down, climbs on top of him and sinks his claws into him. _You’re the enemy, and because you’re the enemy I can not lust for you, but if you rape me I will not refuse you_.

The dreams vary in tone and details, but the end result is always the same. Ardyn violates him, and he enjoys it, begs and screams for more.

He awakens alone. _I can’t believe I slept longer than that slob_. The few times Ardyn had fallen asleep on the couch, he’d stayed asleep until noon at least. Ignis buries his face in the pillow and groans. It’s not the first time he’s had this dream, not the second or even the tenth. _At least I don’t have a hard-on right now, or even worse_ , as has happened in the past. More than once he’d awoken from one of these dreams to shame and sticky sheets.

It’s only when he staggers into the living room five minutes later when he realizes that Ardyn is gone. And it’s only a month later when he realizes that Ardyn is _gone_.

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The demons do not touch him. He can sense them swarming, studying him, but they make no attempt to harm him. As if they know why he is there, who he is going to.

It’s been years since he has set foot in Insomnia, a lifetime ago, but he finds his way through the streets easily, using his cane on occasion to wind his way through a pile of rubble, but his determination drives him onwards and he finds himself before the palace without a single wrong turn. And he feels that he has come _home_ , though he suspects there is more than one reason for feeling as such and he doesn’t know why.

He knows where he will be. Sitting on that throne, possibly hibernating as he waits. That throne that should have been his. Ignis wonders how many lives could have been saved, how much sorrow could have been spared, had the gods only been kind to this man. But kindness is far from his mind, and he storms into the throne room fuming in rage.

“A year. A _year_ , Ardyn.”

He’d been right, because he hears the rustle of fabric now, the sigh. “Has it really been a year? I’m sorry. I’m getting forgetful in my old age.”

“Don’t act so blasé about everything,” he hisses, struggling to keep from screaming in rage. Old age. How old is he by now? Mid-fifties? He can’t tell by his voice, which sounds remarkably similar to how it sounded five years ago. “I’m only twenty-seven. A year is a good percentage of my life.”

“I’m sorry I was unable to witness you blossoming into a mature young man.” His voice is vicious with sarcasm and cruelty and Ignis _hates_.

“ _Don’t_.” Don’t mock me. Don’t you dare mock me for doing the best I could with the time that was given to me, for doing what I had to do. And he’s suddenly even more angry, because the subtle accusation in Ardyn’s voice suggests that Ignis hasn’t grown up at all. And he doesn’t want to think about that so he instead asks, “Why did you stop coming?”

“Maybe I simply got tired of you telling me to go away.”

“Because you’d always show up at such inopportune moments and because you just kept acting as if you owned my home!” _Because you go through my kitchen. Because you sit on my couch and play with my computer. Because you use my shower and sleep in my bed when I’m not there and leave red hairs around the house that Prompto sometimes finds and awkwardly asks about. Because I don’t know what to tell him. Because I live in fear that he will tell Gladio._

“Says the man who just walked into my home to disparage me.”

_It’s my home, too. I was raised here. I ran through these corridors screaming and laughing as a child before you came down with your mantle of darkness._ “Says the filthy Usurper. I don’t like it, not knowing what you’re up to.”

“So you expect me to regularly check in with the enemy? I know Regis was a little inept at politics but I can’t imagine he’d have taught you that such behavior is to be expected.”

“I expect you to regularly check in with _me_ ,” he snarls, a gut reaction that he doesn’t think about, and even as he says it he stumbles back a pace, suddenly afraid. He worries his lower lip, digging a canine into the scar on it left from Ardyn kicking him in the face five years before. “I…”

“Get out. If you’re not out of the palace within the next ten seconds I will warp you out of here and throw you from the top of the gates of Insomnia.”

Ignis freezes at that, opens his mouth to argue, but something stops him. _I will warp you out of here. Warp._ He purses his lips, and he goes.

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He likes being around Talcott. He’s quiet.

The kid should not be driving; he is far too young to be driving, but Ignis trusts him far more than he does Prompto or even Gladio. Iris is the worst of all, while Aranea drives according to non-existent speed limits and uses her blinker even when there is nobody for miles and miles around. It was nice the first couple of times, but Ignis quickly became unnerved at how often the mercenary stopped at what she said were stop signs and traffic lights in empty cities. Better to drive with Talcott, who at least seems to have noticed that the world has more or less ended.

Something about Talcott is a calming presence. Fifteen years younger than him, he's almost too young to even be considered a brother. He's certainly _something_ though. And as cruel as it sounds, he isn't needed. He is no warrior, no demon-fighter like the rest who have moved through Ignis' orbit in the last six years. Ignis does not feel guilty when he spends a lot of time with him, does not feel as if he is depriving the world of someone who could be out on the front lines protecting mankind. Talcott can spend time driving him around, helping him gather intel, reading and collating notes.

If Talcott wonders why they are searching for the Royal Tombs, he doesn't pry. He trusts Ignis whole-heartedly, and this makes Ignis feel almost guilty. Because he is doing this not for the fate of the world but for himself, for Noctis. He needs to know the truth, needs to understand why Ardyn is the Usurper, and nothing that has been written or recorded in his lifetime can explain it. _I must go back, further and further back._

One tomb, a second. Three, four, five.

At first he'd thought he’d wanted to visit them in the order that Noctis had unearthed them, but that had only lasted for a single tomb. _We can't. We have to switch it up, go in a different order. This hurts too much._ Ignis is selfish; he wants to hold those memories within himself so that noone else might ever see them again. So now the visits are random, meaningless, chosen by Ignis throwing darts at a map he cannot see. This one is the one that bothered him the most, the one he's been avoiding.

_The Tomb of the Mystic._

The first of the Lucian kings, while Noctis will be the last. Ignis doesn't like to think about it, doesn't want the reminder that his life has slipped through his fingers and he has been helpless to stop it. _I can't even save those that I love._ He’s been dreading going to this tomb, and so he knows the path well, as many times as he has traversed it in his mind. That’s why Talcott’s words come to him as such a surprise.

"There's nothing here. Maybe it was destroyed?"

"It wasn't destroyed six years ago."

"Ignis, are you sure you got the area right? I mean it's..." _It's been a while. And your memory isn't what it used to be._ He doesn't say it but the words hang in the air between them. An accusation that Talcott could not possibly say because Ignis has told noone of his memory loss, yet an accusation he hears in every word spoken to him, every breath and every look he can no longer respond to.

"It was here. The Tomb of the Mystic."

"Ignis, there's nothing here," he says it firmly, with no exasperation but with no condescending tone, either. "It's an empty cave. It isn't likely that anything was here recently... none of the stones below are clean. It's been like this for a while."

"Someone must have destroyed it." _Devoured it._ He doesn't know what makes him think those words, but they are in his mind. He shakes his head to rid himself of them once, twice, a third time, and he groans. Something is there. He can sense it, feel it in his fingertips.

Just as he has fallen apart in bits and pieces over the years, the recognition of truth comes to him slowly.

_Someone destroyed this. Someone didn't want me to find it. Someone who knows what I have been doing. Ardyn, Ardyn, Ardyn._ He remembers touching his face so many years ago now, running fingers over those sharp cheekbones and strong jaw. So strangely familiar, as if his were a face that Ignis had gazed upon his entire life. Like King Regis. Like his father before him. Izunia. _Izunia_. It’s not merely Ardyn’s name. He’d seen it somewhere else. He knows it in his blood.

"He isn't the Usurper, is he?" he whispers softly.

Talcott nudges him. "Say what now?"

_No, no, no._ He remembers confronting Ardyn in Insomnia, remembers Ardyn's unexpected rage, how firmly he had driven him out, how he’d mentioning warping. "He belongs there."

Talcott, forced to grow up too young, knows better than to push when Ignis grows distant. "Do you want to go back?"

"Yes. I need my library."

Ignis doesn't hear a word Talcott says on the drive back to Lestallum. He doesn't feel the seat beneath him. Doesn't smell the exhaust or the rain nor does he taste the Ebony he absently drinks. For once, the lack of a single sense does not distract him, because he is entirely gone. The truth is curled around his esophagus and it will be made manifest on his tongue soon enough. _I know, I know, I know who you are. What you are._

Because he knows that the hurt that created Ardyn was not recent. Regis could not have hidden a brother, nor could he have hidden an uncle, so easily. Ignis had been too nosy a child. He knew far more about the King than Regis knew. There was not even a bastard child hidden somewhere, except perhaps himself, as he has sometimes wondered. No, Ardyn is something _else_ , something ancient.

-

It’s there. It was there all along.

He’d torn his apartment to pieces trying to find it, the book that had been left in the Regalia in Altissia. The book lying on the backseat the first time he’d climbed into the car, blind and shuddering in pain, forever a passenger in what had once been his vessel. The book with raised ink in one section, perhaps written with a different sort of ink that ruptured over the centuries, so that he could read it with his fingers. The book nobody could explain.

And he understands everything.

_Ardyn._

He is the Immortal Accursed, the Usurper, the _Starscourge_ , roaming Eos for over two thousand years in hatred and sorrow. _And he was_ here _. He’s been here a dozen times. He showed me the comet. He desired to touch me. He was here._ Demanding _that I lay my burdens upon him._ It can only mean one thing.

He lets the book slowly fall from his fingers as his eyes fill with tears.

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Ardyn stays away for over a year, though Ignis senses it immediately when he leaves the walls of the broken city and descends upon the human world, a world that Ignis now knows he is no longer a part of. _Two thousand years. It’s been two thousand years since he has lived a life I can understand._ And so he is unsurprised when a man approached him at a hunter’s hideout, asks what he is up to these days. _I’m just going home, back to Lestallum._

He hadn’t planned on going home, but he will do so now. Ardyn will probably arrive within the next six hours. He might stay away a little longer to increase the chances of Ignis believing it’s too strange of a coincidence, but he won’t be able to resist. He is remarkably impatient about some things, given his age.

So he goes home and pulls the old book out from where he keeps it hidden, runs his fingers over the pages of note a few more times before sighing and sitting down on the couch to wait. At times he paces. He feels almost serene, confident and calm in a way he hasn’t felt in years. Perhaps because he will finally, finally begin to have some answers.

He doesn’t give Ardyn the chance to even speak, not when the man has the gall to warp into his living room. _How many times has he done that, not knowing or not caring that I might be home? How many times has he let his identity slip around me and I just didn’t notice, because such a connection was so impossible I could never make it?_

“You’re more than the Niflheim Chancellor.”

“Niflheim? Rather passé, don’t you think? I believe I am ruler of the world, right now.”

Ignis snarls, so distracted that he thumps his ankle against the leg of the table as he slams the book down. “I’d been curious about a lot of things. About you. And then you were as I knew you’d be. On the throne.

“Izunia. That’s you, isn’t it? I’d read this some time ago but I… my memory is not the best anymore.” The words unfurl on his tongue before he can stop them, and he finds himself frozen. It’s the first time he’s ever admitted it, ever voiced the truth even to himself. _I lost something. I lost something and I can’t even talk about it because I don’t know what it is that’s been torn out of me_.

He pushes further, keeps pushing and pushing until Ardyn finally backs down. It doesn’t take as long as Ignis expected it too. _Because he wanted to tell someone. He’s wanted to all these centuries and he never could._ And so after only a brief interrogation, Ignis stabbing him again and again with accusations, does he sigh in his melodramatic way and murmur, in a voice that is suddenly not familiar, “It seems…as if the true curse is not immortality but being forgotten.”

_So it’s true. It’s true._ And for a moment Ignis feels himself frozen, trapped in the tear of space and time that he’d created by demanding the Accursed reveal himself. Suddenly so much makes sense, so much _more_ makes sense. It was Ardyn all along, the monster that brought the darkness, the Usurper that will force Noctis to sacrifice himself in order to bring back the dawn. _Or not_. Because he has read the books. He has had the visions. He has seen the tomb, or lack thereof. _He does not want this any more than Noctis does, than I do._ It explains a lot.

And then he’s laughing, snorting and standing upright, rocking back slightly as he pushes his hands into his pockets to keep them from trembling. "Odd to think that the Accursed Starscourge of Old raids my kitchen when I'm not at home."

Whatever response Ardyn was expecting, it wasn’t that, because he breathes out something that could almost be a laugh in response, and Ignis desperately wishes he could see his face. "Living up to expectations grows tedious after a few centuries."

"Ardyn.” The name, the _name_ feels alive in his throat. _I’ve said this. I’ve said this before, or something akin to it. I am a mirror of what I do not know._ “How long have you been alone?"

"An eternity."

_An eternity._ There was a hesitation before he answered, a stillness in the air that Ignis knows holds answers, but to what he does not know. So he steps forward, reaches out and advances until his fingers brush against Ardyn’s coat. _It might have been an eternity, but at least a year of that you imposed upon yourself._

And Ignis curls his fingers in the folds of fabric, his voice barely even a whisper as the truth overflows his veins and spills out of him. “I missed you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again, all who have enjoyed this series. It really means so much that so many people have read it and supported me throughout these last six and a half months. I'm happy to be able to finally post this last piece. Please look forward to more Ardnis from me! <3

 

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The movement is so fast that Ignis feels him before he hears the crackle of a warp strike being performed, and for a moment, one gut-wrenching moment, he thinks it’s _Noctis_.

But it isn’t. It wouldn’t be, couldn’t be. It might never be again. Ardyn. And Ignis flinches away from the raging power that the man emanates as he kills, devours, the kokyangwuti before them. It’s over in a second, and as the crackle of magic settles and fades around them, Ignis finally finds himself able to speak. “Why…?”

“You’re the only one in all of Eos who knows who I am. If you die, then I would have no one to complain to.”

Though he hasn’t complained, not once. Perhaps the pain is so old, so deep, he has probably ceased to think about it any longer. Or perhaps he doesn’t know how to talk about it. _Has anyone else ever known? Have you ever truly talked to anyone?_ But Ignis remembers when he’d asked Ardyn how long he had been alone. _An eternity._ He is struck dumb by the comment, the nonchalant way that Ardyn says it, but after a moment the older man goes on.

“Keep your wits about you,” he hisses as he smacks the backside of his head, but there’s no power behind it. A cuff, no different than something Ignis used to do with his friends when they acted like fools. Cuffs they have ceased to inflict on him since he lost his sight.

 _Touch. He touched me_. He remembers the night so long ago now when Ardyn had seen him naked, had devoured his scars with his eyes and asked if he could touch them. He remembers his refusal, because he felt he was not to be revered but ravaged. It feels good, _right_ , but he doesn’t dare mention it. So instead he asks, “How do you do it? The warp-striking? I thought you’d hidden something in my apartment but…” _But you can always find me._

“I don’t use weapons like the rest of them.” _Them_ , the Lucis Caelum, the family that cast him out. He says the word with such disgust that Ignis flinches. “I use, ah, how shall I put this? I home in on… _disease_.”

Disease. It’s unexpected. But he was a healer once, after all. _And now he is the plague._ Ignis wonders when this ability developed, if Ardyn had once been drawn to what he could triumph over, or if he only later came to be drawn to his own kin, but he’s also indignant. “Blindness isn’t a disease.”

He’s up against him so quickly that Ignis staggers as Ardyn pushes his shoulder into his face and grabs him. Ignis finds him shaking, suddenly terrified as Ardyn’s hand wanders over his chest.

“Oh no, Ignis, not the blindness,” he whispers, his voice sultry and dangerous.

“Then what?” He wants to lean into his touch but he’s so _afraid_ as Ardyn’s mouth brushes his ear now. Everything is so familiar.

“ _Heartache_.”

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Needs. Needs drive him to do that which he’d never expect.

He’d felt Ardyn up recently, demanded that he strip and ran his fingers over every inch of his body, stroked his scars and asked questions about them. He’d interrogated him, really, about how he’d been tortured, how he’d been killed. Ardyn had been leery, even nervous, but he’d unexpectedly obeyed, so much so that Ignis eventually grabbed his dick and taunted him, unable to keep back his frustration at how this man seemed so remarkably _disinterested_ in him.

Ignis doesn’t like feeling ignored, not when he’s been so desperate lately, his skin oversensitive and his mind wandering. It’s the blindness, he suspects, that has made him this way. _Hopelessly horny_ , as Prompto would say. And Gladio has always been there for him, Gladio of the wide shoulders and strong arms and ever-ready grin that he’s had ever since they were children and Ignis was a blushing fool trying to cope with puberty in the Crownsguard locker rooms. He doesn’t know how he feels now, doesn’t know if he feels the same as he did when he was thirteen and first noticed Gladio in that way, but he knows that he likes him, trusts him.

He only has to kiss Gladio once, lean in and brush his lips against the man’s shoulder one evening in the car as they’re driving to Hammerhead to drop off a load of supplies. It isn’t the first time he’s kissed him, but it’s the first time in fifteen years.

One kiss, his lips barely grazing the leather of Gladio’s jacket, and it’s enough.

“Where to?” the older man says softly.

And at that moment, Ignis almost feels badly. _Because Gladio’s been waiting for this, apparently. I should have done it sooner, should have given him something after he has done so much for me_. For years, decades, he’d believed that the man had no interest in him.

“The caravan at Hammerhead,” he murmurs, his voice low and urgent. Needy. It’s too close a place, too near people they know and love, but they would expect nothing of Ignis and Gladio crashing together.

“You sure?”

“I’ve been sure a long time,” he reaches over, touches fingers to Gladio’s thigh. He isn’t sure. He’s just lonely.

-

It feels good. It feels so sublimely, unbearably good. Until suddenly it doesn’t.

“Gladio!” the name comes out like a wail, and something in the back of his mind wonders at his ability to know who is on top of him. He’s confused. _Why should I not know that? Who do I expect?_ He doesn’t know, but he knows who it’s _not_. “Stop. Stop. I can’t…”

The older man shows admirable restraint, because he backs off immediately, pulls his fingers out smoothly and takes his hands off, his mouth off, and rolls off of him. No skin contact.

“I can’t,” he whispers again, this time to himself. _I can’t, I can’t, I can’t._ They’d been careful. Gladio had used a lot of lubricant, had ensured that he was comfortable, had even made him laugh and squirm beneath him. He’d used his fingers and his mouth, but the head of his cock was as far as he got before Ignis began to scream. _It felt good. I was enjoying it. I felt alive and my body was reacting the way it never has before and I… I am not myself._ Because suddenly Gladio was not Gladio, or perhaps he was Gladio, but not someone _else_. He can’t be sure, can’t gather his thoughts beneath the pounding of his heart.

“It’s all right,” Gladio whispers behind him, and it almost sounds like he means it.

It’s some time before Ignis sits up, pulling the blankets to his chest and bringing his heels up against his thighs as he leans forward. He wants to vomit, wants to curl up so tightly that he ceases to exist. It felt like a _violation_ , and it should not have, because it was only Gladio, someone he loves and trusts with his life.

“You okay?”

“There…” He inhales slowly, hating how it shudders, as if every beat of his heart is making the air he breathes flinch. He hasn’t ever spoken of it, not even to himself. “There are holes in my memory.”

He can _feel_ Gladio looking at him.

“There are things missing. I’m…not the same person I used to be, but I can’t remember what happened. Or why.” It feels good to say it somehow, to give life to it by letting it hover in the air between them. Suddenly, it is no longer his burden alone to bear.

He feels fingers gently trace his spine. “It’s not the blindness? Or Noctis being gone?”

He shakes his head once, a violent twitch. “No. It was before that. I think… when we left Insomnia, or just a little while after. Something happened. To me, or because of me.”  

“Ignis,” he finally says softly, and Ignis lives in the pause between words until his friend says the words he fears the most. “Sometimes people forget when something bad happens. One of Iris’ friends…”

“That isn’t it,” he says sharply, because he knows what he means and doesn’t want to hear the word aloud. _Rape_. He isn’t certain even as he denies it, because his body certainly reacts differently to things now, and he has _needs_ that he can’t recall ever having. Needs that drove him to this very bed. “I’m not afraid.”

“Then what?”

“I _ache_ ,” his voice cracks, and he’s sobbing without knowing why.

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"What do you remember from before?" This is easily the fiftieth time Ignis has gotten in the car with him since the comet, the fiftieth time he has tolerated Ardyn’s arm over the back of his seat, the fiftieth time he’s ignored the fingers that sometimes brush against him.

"Everything."

"What happened? I don't believe what I've read. It seems...edited." To put it lightly. And the tomb, the tomb of the Mystic, obliterated. Ignis knows that it was Ardyn who did it, Ardyn who attempted to erase the last remnants of himself from Eos. _Interesting_. Maybe because he knows the end is coming.

"I'm not about to start talking after 2000 years," he snarls, unexpectedly hostile and standoffish, and Ignis knows immediately. _He's never talked because he's never been asked_.

"Tell me." He reaches back, grabs his arm in such a forward manner that he surprises himself. Two thousand years alone. He cannot fathom it. He's felt only partially alone for only seven years, and that has been difficult enough. "Tell me."

Ardyn doesn't speak immediately, but he doesn't pull away the way he has done so often over the years. Instead he sighs and pulls the car over, slams it into park but doesn’t turn the engine off. And when he finally speaks, he does so slowly, his voice low and raw as if he'd given up all pretense of not caring.

“I have become a vehicle for the fate of the world,” he murmurs, and Ignis finds himself leaning into those words as he continues, “condemned to the role of darkness, of the enemy. It is what I was told to be, made to live as, what I will be remembered as. You were thrown into your role when you were only six. You never had a chance to be anything else. I was 47. I had a goal, a plan, a destination, and it was ripped away from me. Your tragedy is at once different and the same. Perhaps it’s why…”

Fingers on his face, tracing his jaw and cupping his chin. Ignis finds that he can't breathe.

And then Ardyn laughs, withdraws his hand. “You looked too serious.”

Ignis scowls, recovering quickly as he releases his arm, steps back a few paces. “Why did you destroy your brother’s tomb if it was one of the last remnants of your memory left on Eos?”

“I didn’t want you finding it, obviously. You and your _visions_. I know all about them, know what you see, what you know. The end is nigh and I didn’t want you mucking it up.” He says it with an ease and a mockery that Ignis knows is false.

 _I would muck it up if I could. I would let the world burn if it would save the friend I have come to view as my brother, my son._ But he knows that that is impossible, and so he stays silent.

They’ve never truly talked about the Prophecy, about Noctis awakening, about the coming dawn. They dance around it, pick at topics pertaining to it, but they never talk about how Noctis and Ardyn are destined to kill one another. Which is why it is surprising when Ardyn abruptly says, “I’m sorry. But I want this to end.”

Ignis cocks his head and turns in his direction, opening his eyes as he does. Prompto had told him recently that his eyes had taken on a certain light, and since then he’d trained them on Ardyn more often than he used to. He doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact that Ardyn just admitted to desiring death. That well is too deep and too alluring. “I used to think… that Noctis would have given you the throne, had you only asked, had you told him the truth of who you are. I used to think that if that were to happen, he could live.”

“Naïve.”

“Not all of us have had 2000 years to brine,” he snaps back.

Ardyn only laughs in response and puts the car back into drive.

-

It’s that night when he tells him, when he’s sitting in bed reading with the magic that Ardyn had given him without his consent so many years ago now, that he tells him.

He tells him that he tried to fuck Gladio, that it fell apart, that he’s lonely and that there’s something wrong with his memory. Once he opens his mouth, it keeps coming until finally he says the one thing he’d never thought he would say, the thing he had never admitted to himself.

"I'm attracted to you," he heaves a sigh before whispering. Because he is, _he is_. Not only the appearance seared behind his eyelids that he can never forget, the sharp jaw and strong chin and amber eyes. It's not only the strength of his arms that he has felt more than once over the years, the scent of his body when he stands too close to him. It's his intelligence, his wittiness, his brutal honesty and his simultaneous tendency towards deception. The things that he likes, the things he knows, the things he says. _I don't care what you are._

"What do you mean by that?"

Ignis almost swears at him, almost tells him to get the fuck out. “Do you remember when I felt your scars, and I grabbed you?”

His voice is deadpan but absent of the usual sarcasm. “It’s difficult to forget.”

“I wanted you then. And you…didn’t want me back. It made me angry. That’s why I said what I did, and why I went to Gladio. I have urges I didn’t have before I lost my sight. And I’m lonely. And you’re here. I despise you, abhor you, but you’re here.” _But I don't. I don't hate you._

"What makes you think I didn't want you?"

"Because you didn't fuck me." _You idiot. I offered myself, time and again. I let you sleep in my bed. I let you watch me naked in the bathroom. I stripped you and touched you._

"Ignis."

"What?" He snarls.

"Ignis." And then Ardyn is there, in front of him, cupping his face and leaning in, enveloping him. Ignis gasps, immediately drops his jaw when he feels those lips press against his own.

His body reacts, reacts so sharply and violently he feels that it is no longer his own, and he gives himself up to it. He wraps his arms around Ardyn's neck, his shoulders, tries to drag him down into the bed, but Ardyn resists him. And Ignis bites him in frustration, desperate and needy, his cock throbbing and heat pooling in his belly from only a kiss. He can tell Ardyn is grinning into the kiss as he deepens it, runs his tongue over the roof of Ignis' mouth, and growls, growls so low and deep that Ignis unconsciously kicks a leg out, his body aching and empty _. I need you, I need you._

Ignis tries to drag him back when Ardyn finally leans away, but he knows better than to lunge forward and grab him again.

"Don't leave tonight," he half-sobs, unable to keep his voice from cracking. He wipes a hand across his face, feels the wetness of saliva and tears already. "Ardyn. I want you. For years, I've wanted you.

"You don't know what you're asking."

 _Yes, yes I do._ "Please don't leave."

But he leaves. He always leaves.

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“Do you like chess?”

Ignis inclines his head and turns his face in his direction, but he doesn’t immediately answer. He merely waits.

And though he doesn’t respond, Ardyn knows what he would say and replies in turn, “Do you think you can still play? Memorize the board in your head and let me move the pieces for you?”

“Still? That’s how I always played,” he snaps out. Though it isn’t quite true. He played with Regis many a time as a child and relied on a board, but he knows that he can manage it otherwise. Assuming Ardyn doesn’t cheat and he suspects that he will cheat. The man seems like the sort to cheat at anything and everything.

“I call your bluff,” Ardyn purrs, low in his throat as he snaps his fingers. Pulling something from his own Armiger. Ignis has often wondered just how much junk is in it.

“I’ve no interest in playing right now,” he snaps out, finally spinning in the computer chair to fully face him. He’d come home recently to a new keyboard and tablet, an enhanced one specifically for the blind. Technology from the now-defunct Gralea. Obviously from Ardyn. Obviously not something he’s going to thank him for, not when the asshole kissed him and then left him to his own devices several months ago. But he’ll still use it.

It’s almost as if Ardyn knows what he’s thinking though. “As if I care what you want.”

Ignis snorts. He’s curious, he must admit. He hasn’t found anyone worth playing since Regis passed away. “If I win, you have to disguise yourself.”

“Why? It’s not like you can see my lovely visage.”

“I want to go to a restaurant,” he shrugs, ignoring the jab at his blindness. Since learning the truth about what Ardyn is, what he has suffered, it’s difficult to take his occasional nastiness seriously. His wounds run deep, and they will never heal. Ignis is only blind. He has not been forsaken by the Astrals.  

“I’m amazed there are any left.”

“Food is home to people. It isn’t merely sustenance. We can’t be properly human without it.” He almost regrets saying it, _human_ , but Ardyn has probably long since grown immune to such words. _He’s been a monster for two thousand years now_.

Not a monster, not really.

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Ignis tries to keep the purpose out of his actions, the impatience, the lust, the need to accomplish this as quickly as possible so he can move on with his shame, but it’s remarkably difficult. Only the shaking of his fingers slow him. It’s been ten months now since Ardyn had kissed him, since the older man had walked away from him. Ten months, and they never talked about it. Ten months, and everything Ignis tried to do to flirt with him fell flat. No matter now. There’s no _hint_ for Ardyn to pick up on now, because Ignis is stripping with all the subtlety of a Hyperion.

He can feel Ardyn’s eyes on him as the man lounges on the bed behind him. Despite their incident nearly a year ago, he’d continued to stay the night an alarming number of times, had even offered to help Ignis shave one morning. As if they are a weary, tired married couple, going through the motions of living together without ever touching, ever acknowledging what lies between them. He’s sick of it.

He can’t keep himself from shaking when he slips beneath the covers, presses up against Ardyn and kisses his cheek. Once. Quickly. _Don’t refuse me this time. Don’t you dare refuse me this time_.

And Ardyn doesn’t.

He rolls on top of him, pins his wrists down for a moment as he kisses him slowly, the same dominating, leonine kiss he’d given him nearly a year ago. And Ignis whimpers, arches up to meet him and jerks a hand down until Ardyn releases him so that he can wrap his arms around his shoulders. He can feel the scars on his back and they make him ache even as he longs for this. _How many scars exist between us, how many mistakes that we can never take back?_ But Ardyn. Ardyn is not a mistake.

He kisses him a second time, a third as he hooks one leg around Ardyn’s hips and drags him closer still. The man is wearing pants, though Ignis knows by now that he cares little for underwear, and he desperately wants them gone, wants nothing in between them. _Not even skin. I want to be one with you. I want to feel what you feel and I want to understand your sorrow just as I want to burden you with my own_.

And so when Ardyn finally moves, finally slips a hand in between them and touches Ignis’ cock, unzips the fly of his pants, Ignis gasps out, “I’m. I’ve never done this before so I…” _I might be horrible. I don’t know what to do. I dream of this so often that I feel as if we’ve fucked a thousand times, but I don’t know what to do in reality_. He hates admitting mistakes, admitting when he doesn’t know something, but he doesn’t want Ardyn to think he’s had experience and is still _this_ bad.

The words make Ardyn suddenly still above him, his weight warm and solid but suddenly reserved, distant, and Ignis bites back a cry of frustration. _A mistake, another mistake. He won’t want you now. He probably thought you were a slut and that this would just be a one-off, that you would actually be experienced and fun, instead of helpless and clueless_.

But then Ardyn curls around him, rubs his nose against his ear and smiles against his skin. “Just let your body take over. Don’t fight it. Just let it feel good.”

And Ignis gives himself up. He isn’t used to not having control over a situation, isn’t used to letting others take charge, but he _trusts_ Ardyn deep in his bones in a way he knows he shouldn’t. The Usurper, the Accursed, the enemy. But Ardyn is gentle now, laughing softly when Ignis gestures towards the nightstand table. _You were planning this all along, hm?_ He murmurs as he rips the seal off the bottle of lubricant. _Typical of you._

Very typical, though what he is doing is anything but that for him. _Except_. Something is familiar, as if in another life, another time, Ignis Scientia had had a lover like this.

The thought brings tears to his eyes.

-

He cries himself to sleep when it’s over. Not because it hurts. It _did_ hurt, but not as much as Ignis had expected. And not because he is ashamed, though he suspects that he should be. He doesn’t regret anything, or perhaps he only regrets that he hadn’t done something sooner. But because of _something_ , the same something that had scared him about Ardyn so many years ago now. At first he furiously wipes his eyes, buries his face in his hands, until Ardyn gently catches his wrists. “It’s normal to cry.”

And Ignis had laughed at that. He’d laughed until he’d cried again and finally drifted off into sleep, satiated and exhausted. For the first time since he’d lost his sight, he feels that his body is truly his own.

He awakens to Ardyn stroking his neck, leaning over him, and in a state of half-consciousness he turns towards him. It crosses his mind in that moment that this man could kill him, that perhaps he will, perhaps he deserves it after bedding down with the Accursed and enjoying it, but he can’t bring himself to consider it further.

“Again? I’d like again,” he laughs, presses against Ardyn. Ardyn who is already pushing a hand between his legs, working two fingers inside of him as he arches his back and gasps.

And Ardyn takes him away again, lets him forget his sorrow and reminds him of who he used to be before the fall.

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A long time ago, Regis had told him and Noctis a story about a man who had gotten lost in the mountains, who knew that the winter night was falling and that at this point, it was very unlikely he could survive the night. He could either try to take shelter and get through it, making a fire and getting settled before it grew too cold, or he could push onwards in the same direction until he could go no more. And Regis had asked them what they would do. They’d both said push onwards, though Ignis can’t imagine Noctis at his age and lethargy now, at least the now Ignis remembers, ever agreeing to that. The thing was, they had said it for different reasons. Noctis mentioned hope, whereas Ignis had shrugged and said that he’d be dead either way so he might as well try and find something interesting before the end. It had been one of the few times in Ignis’ life when he noticed the king looking at him a little strangely, as if he was not what he expected.

He feels as if he is the stranger in the story now. He has gone too far, and he might as well get the most out of it before it destroys him.

So he keeps going back to Ardyn, again and again and _again_.

And Ardyn always gives him control, lets him decide when and where they meet, what they do, whether or not they are going to talk or fuck or just drive around and ignore each other, which Ignis finds he likes quite a bit. He can’t see him or hear him, but he knows he’s there.

Ardyn always gives him control until the day that he doesn’t. The day that he takes Ignis’ forearm and says he has something for him. Ignis immediately recoils. _I don’t want anything from you but sex and silence. I don’t want gifts._ But Ardyn laughs and ignores him, merely pushes him towards the car. _The driver’s side_. And as Ignis brushes his hand against the handle he freezes.

It’s not what he expects. He knows this car, knows this door handle and knows this door.

The Regalia. 

An illusion, not one he can see but one he can feel. It must be. The Regalia is gone, more or less demolished in the tunnels of Niflheim.

Ardyn gently pushes him out of the way, opens the driver’s seat and touches the small of his back. _Go forward_. And just as Ignis obeyed him so many years ago, he does again now. He slides into the seat carefully, immediately recognizing the leather. The same grain, the same softness. He runs his hand over passenger side and feels the scrapes in the seat left from the time Noctis threw a cat into the car. Ardyn didn’t merely replicate the car. It’s real.

“The upholstery is the same,” he says in disbelief.

“I changed as little as I could but obviously some things were damaged beyond repair.”

“Who…?” he can’t imagine Ardyn repairing cars himself. The man can’t even cut his own hair.

“Biggs Calloux. It took a fair bit of…negotiating.”

The way he says it makes the hair on Ignis’ neck stand on end. “Define _negotiating_.”

“You really don’t trust me, do you? At least you’re not an idiot. It took a lot of money and scrap from Insomnia. And I told him it was for you, which he seemed rather disturbed by.”

“I don’t even want to know what you told him.” He can only imagine, and now he fervently hopes he can avoid Biggs in the near future. Aranea hasn’t called him asking if he’s fucking the Niflheim Chancellor so at the very least, Biggs is keeping quiet about it. Probably traumatized.

So he pushes the thought from his mind and lifts his hands now, gently lays them on the steering wheel. Only to strip his gloves off and repeat the gesture. The same. _It’s the same_.

“Do you want to drive it?”

“Is this an apology?” he whispers, his voice hoarse and low. An apology for ending the world, for condemning Noctis to the Crystal, to death. _I hate you more than I can ever say, even as I lay with you in darkness._

“I don’t apologize.”

 _Figures_. But he knows what it is. Ardyn is not as suave as he thinks. “Drive it out to the plains where I can’t kill anyone but you. You’ll have to guide me after that.”

“I’m immortal.”

“Unfortunately.” _But not because I want you to die. I just don’t want you to suffer any longer._

_-_

The drive is unexpectedly fun, so fun that he wishes it would never end. But eventually Ardyn drives him back.

He sits in the car for a long time afterwards, touching the dashboard, resting his forehead against the steering wheel as he used to so often back then, back when the world was alive. Thankfully Ardyn doesn’t say a word, and eventually he gets out of the car and wanders off into the night, leaving Ignis alone for another twenty minutes. The car holds so many memories, so much love and so much joy that he wishes he could absorb it, wishes he could crawl inside of the engine and curl around it and let the pipes and wires sink into his bones. _I was happy once_.

He’s ready when Ardyn finally appears again.

“Take her away,” he says softly.

“You don’t want her?” He doesn’t seem surprised.

“No,” he murmurs, but he can’t explain it. And he is eternally thankful that Ardyn doesn’t ask him why.

Ardyn doesn’t ask because he knows.

“Take her home,” he whispers, and he knows that Ardyn knows what he means, what he wants. He knows that Ardyn can hide massive things in his Armiger, that he will be true to his word and return it to the city in which it was born. The only car ever created in Insomnia, imported piece by piece from Niflheim and built within the palace.

“I’ll take her home,” he whispers, tapping Ignis’ shoulder faintly as he speaks, and that’s when it hits Ignis.

Insomnia is his home, too. _He and I, we have the same home. I wish, I wish we could have met under different circumstances. I want to be there with you. I want to call it home with you._

He waits until he hears the engine rev down the road before he allows himself to cry.

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Gladio forgives him quicker than he expects, or perhaps never forgives him because he feels there is nothing to forgive. _It's not a big deal, Ignis. Drop it._ But he can't help but push. _We can try again. I want to try again._ And sometimes he kisses him, fumbles in the dark with him some nights, but they don't try again. So Ignis knows exactly what he’s referring to when one day Gladio tells him, “You’ve been a little more relaxed lately. It’s good.”

"I suppose I'm with someone,” he says evenly, continuing to polish his blades. He’d thought about this already, thought long and hard about how much he should tell the others _. Nothing_. “It's easier when you don't care about that person."

"That's cold."

He only shrugs indifferently. Gladio knows he can be cold, has known it since the time he witnesses ten-year-old Ignis shatter another kid’s nose because the kid made a comment about Noctis’s wheelchair; he wouldn't expect anything else. "I just get it out of my system. Kind of weird the first time, but..."

Gladio huffs at that. "The first time? Really?"

"Yea what did you think, when we tried it?"

He hesitates. _He doesn't know what to say. He's about to tell a lie._ But he only sighs instead. "Ignis, you were so confident. You seemed to know what you were doing."

 _Because I did know what I was doing. I knew just as I knew what to do with Ardyn and I don’t know why or how I knew and it’s been eating me alive._ It’s crossed his mind that Gladio was right, all that time ago. That he was raped, that his traumatized mind pushed the horror aside and locked it up. But he can’t accept that, because. _Because_. If that was the case, only one person could have done it. Just as there is only one person that Ignis wants to _be_ with.  


-

Ignis is insatiable. It’s as if a part of him that had been deeply buried was allowed to surface. Or resurface. He wonders about that, wonders at what he lost. _I never used to be like this. Something happened, something more than just losing my sight_. But some days he doesn’t even care, because he knows what he wants and Ardyn is always, always ready to offer it. _Burden me with your needs_ , he’d said, and Ignis does this voraciously. They fuck so often that sometimes Ignis is alarmed at how active he is given his age and the stress and depression he is struggling with. Ardyn can be remarkably creative during sex, too, and he’d eventually encouraged Ignis to top him occasionally. Strange, to fuck the Accursed Starscourge. It’s rarely in his apartment those first months. Ignis has stopped thinking about how filthy the backseat of the Vixen must be by now, has stopped worrying if others hear them or even see them as long as neither Prompto or Gladio know, has stopped stressing over his sexual urges. He only calls Ardyn now when he touches himself, when he’s lonely, when he’s needy. 

But it’s also so much more than that, because he likes being around him, likes listening to him speak, arguing with him, learning from him. He likes just spending time with him, and not only because Ardyn buys him things, takes him all over Lucis, has taken him into the ruins of Gralea and stood guard while he was given free reign to explore. Even when Ardyn has nothing to offer, he likes to be near him.

And after a time, he gives up the pretenses. He stops making excuses to see him, stops acting like he has any reason to see him beyond merely wanting to spend time with him. And without the excuses, he no longer needs to contact him only when he’s horny, when he’s needy.

It isn’t until the eleventh time he calls Ardyn that he finally acts, or fails to act. “I’ll be going back, then,” he says softly, leans against the car door in a silent demand for Ardyn to pull over.

He immediately obeys. And Ardyn touches his shoulder gently then, runs fingers up over the collar of his coat and brushes them against his skin, sparking electricity through Ignis’ veins.

It takes a monumental effort to lean away from it.

“You don’t want it today?”

It. Sex.

“No. I’m good as is.” _I just wanted to see you._ He hasn’t brought up his suspicions. He doesn’t want to believe them, doesn’t want to consider the possibility, but it eats at him. And he wonders what Ardyn would do if he refused him, if he would attack him.

But Ardyn doesn’t. He only withdraws his hand and yawns loudly in his irritating way. Ignis can imagine his tongue curling over his teeth. “Good. You’ve caused early-onset arthritis in my hips as it is.”

“I don’t think 2040-odd years is _early-onset_ ,” he quips before abruptly changing the subject. At least, it would seem as such to Ardyn. “Remember some time ago? I mentioned how Gladio thinks I was…assaulted?”

“Hard to forget such an awkward conversation.”

“I don’t know if he was right or not.” He could say more, so much more, but his throat is tight and he is suddenly exhausted.

Ardyn groans. “No heart-to-hearts with the Accursed.”

Ignis has only come to expect the rudeness. “I can’t imagine _why_ you’ve been alone all those years.”

“Especially because people with judgment as poor as yours are a gil a dozen,” Ardyn purrs back without skipping a beat, and Ignis can’t help but grin.

Because suddenly, something is growing in clarity.

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 “Towards the Citadel District plaza.”

“I know.”

“If we turn left at the next intersection…”

“I know,” Ardyn mutters again.

He doesn’t ask how Ardyn knows where it is. He can imagine him scouring the palace, reading every piece of paper he can find, recovering every damaged file from every computer and flash drive he stumbles upon. Ignis had been more or less adopted by the royal family at the age of six. There were a lot of files on him in those ruins. _He probably knows more about me than I myself do at this point._ The thought doesn’t bother him as much as he thought it would.

This morning he’d awoken at what would have been dawn, so many years ago now. He’d awoken and leaned over and kissed Ardyn until he awoke. But instead of offering sex, he’d only murmured, _Ardyn, take me home._ And Ardyn had.

Ardyn says nothing more about it, not until they are nearly there, by the South and West walls. Only then does he sigh. “Nearly to the red light district. Odd that the retainer to the king would live so far from the palace. Did you request this place or was it given to you?”

“I bought it myself. And it’s not in the red light district.” It’s close, just as it’s close to the immigrant quarters, Galahdtown, as it had been nicknamed.

“Huh. Royal wages not enough to get an apartment in a more presentable area?”

Ignis only shrugs.

The building still stands. Ignis knew it would. He’d asked around long ago, not because he cared about anything in the apartment, not because he selfishly wanted to make sure he still had a home, but because Prompto had been worried for him, had been concerned about everyone having a place to return to when Insomnia was saved. That had been long ago, before the Darkness, before the Ruin. Back when they believed that Insomnia could be seized from the Empire and made their home again.

The stairs are narrower than he remembers, and he stumbles once, only to have Ardyn grab his arm and pull him back. But he says nothing, and Ignis is grateful for it. He’s tired of being asked if he’s okay when no one ever asked when he was sighted. When he reaches the landing, he pulls the key from his pocket, the one he’d held close to him for nine years and holds his breath as he pushes it open.

“Small for the King’s Retainer,” is all Ardyn says.

“I like small and orderly. I didn’t need much space.” Even now, his apartment is small. Easier to manage when blind. “Don’t talk anymore.”

He obliges for once, even recedes a few paces, though he remains in the doorway and Ignis can feel his eyes on him. _Give me some privacy, you idiot._ But at the same time he doesn’t mind; Ardyn’s presence has gotten beneath his skin, has melded with his viscera and seeped into his marrow. He doesn’t feel him the way he feels others, doesn’t feel imposed or intruded upon, yet he somehow feels no more alone for it. The opposite, of anything. _Whoever knew the Accursed could have such a calming effect?_ The thought makes him smile.

He touches the windows first, the windows and their frames. Then the sills, the desk, the bookshelves still filled with books now coated with a fine layer of dust. Not as much as he’d expect. The chair, right down to its legs. He strokes the floorboards, feels his way to the bed and runs his hands on the floor beneath it. Almost immaculate, as if the world recognized his need for cleanliness and refused even the dust. The bed he touches last, the sheets, the two pillows, one still holding the indent of his head.

He almost asks Ardyn to come over, almost asks him to lie on the bed with him and do what he will. For all of the unexpected gentleness Ardyn has shown him, he is still territorial, possessive, and Ignis knows that he would almost certainly fuck him, claim him, make him his in the bed Ignis slept in before they met. _I want that. I want that so badly. I want him to hold me in this place that I hurt but I don’t want to write over these memories._

Those memories of happiness.

The realization makes him step back, because he knows then that he cannot even sit on the bed. _I am not who I was. Let that Ignis live on, a ghost in a city of ghosts. Let him sit on the edge of this bed as he puts his socks on and brushes his hair and checks his phone and prepares to go on a road trip that will mark the end of the world. Let him remain_.

It’s enough. Enough.

“Okay,” he finally murmurs, hesitating one last moment before drawing his hand back and away from the desk where he’d written thousands of pages of notes over the years, his life scrawled in a series of mathematical equations and military history. “I’m…good.”

“You’re ready?”

“Yes. I gathered what I wanted.” The memories, the dreams, the lingering love in the cracks between the floorboards. He doesn’t mention these things to Ardyn though, doesn’t dare put words to a feeling that the man before him has probably never felt and never can feel, because he was deprived of his homecoming for millennia.

And almost without thinking, as he steps towards the door and brushes past Ardyn, he grabs his hand and he doesn’t let go.

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The night before the end of the world. _Noctis will return tomorrow, as much as we can understand of tomorrow since we have lost all sense of time_. Ignis will spend it in his apartment in Lestallum, in the warmth and comfort of his bed, before heading to Hammerhead to wait. _Don’t wait for him at the Quay. Angelgard is not a pleasant place. I doubt he’d want you to see him right away._ Ardyn had warned him.

“Stay tonight.” Because while Ardyn had offered to drive him most of the way to Hammerhead in the morning, he hadn’t offered to stay. He’d shown up that afternoon, lingered into the evening. He very rarely cooked for Ardyn, the immortal telling him time and again that he didn’t care to have Ignis do anything out of a sense of duty, that he only had to cook when he actually wanted to. He’d wanted to cook earlier, and so he made what he knew Ardyn liked.

“You know I’m greedy. You don’t need to command me.”

Ignis smiles at that, a smile that does not reach the eyes he keeps closed for fear of weeping. “But I will. Come here.”

-

The first time that night, Ardyn takes him slow, agonizingly, torturously, tantalizingly slow, and somehow it makes Ignis burn all the more. _Ardyn the burning one, Ignis aflame._ He likes how well their names fit, feels that it means something, and he so desperately wants the world to have meaning, and this is all he thinks of as Ardyn pushes him to orgasm without touching his cock. A rarity, even with his sensitive body.

Ignis rides him the second time, fast and rough and messy and loud. They both laugh then, desperate and somehow lonely even when joined together as they are. _This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends._ Ignis knows now that Ardyn’s life has been one long dark comedy, a sick farce put on by the Astrals to punish humanity for what they couldn’t punish Ifrit enough for, and to go out fucking and laughing is only fitting. He tells Ardyn as much, clenching his muscles around his dick and purring in his ear, and Ardyn snarls and bites him in return. _I adore your filthy mouth, Ignis Scientia_.

The third time is a couple of hours later, Ardyn aware that while his immortal body might not need time to recover, Ignis’ does, and it is somewhere in between. It is only after that, only after Ignis cries as he always does, when he whispers his name. “I need to tell you something.”

A finger to his lips. “Not now.” There is a quiet desperation in his voice.

And Ignis feels, not for the first time, that he is on the edge of a precipice, that his memory is within his reach. Because this is familiar. _So familiar_. So he lifts his hands and touches Ardyn’s face, feels him slowly and memorizes his expression.

_So familiar._

-

Ignis knows what is coming, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He holds Ardyn longer than normal that morning before slipping out of bed to make Ebony, to make sure everything is in order. Only then does he return to the bed, crawl back into Ardyn’s arms and kiss him awake. He wishes he could see him in that moment, wishes he could gaze upon those attractive features one last time. _I don’t want to lose you, too._

And Ardyn rolls onto him, settles between his thighs. _Please, please_ , Ignis gasps. He’s still open from the night before, the bottle of lubricant still under the pillow. They have the time. _Please_.

“Don’t say another word,” Ardyn whispers in response, presses a finger to his lips and laughs softly.

Ignis smiles and pulls Ardyn’s face down to meet his.

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Ardyn grabs his shoulders then, gently yet firmly, and pushes him back. A few hundred meters from Hammerhead, pulled over where Ignis’ friends won’t see. This is the parting. “Leave. When you come back, we will be enemies, Ignis Scientia.”

He doesn’t move. _Enemies. We have always been enemies, offering one another a brief respite in the darkness._ But he knows he is lying to himself. It isn’t until he hears Ardyn turn then he steps forward.

“Ardyn.” The word tastes alive, familiar and full of love, on his tongue. “Were we…intimate?”

There is a hesitation between when he draws his next breath and when he speaks, a hesitation that Ignis lives inside of. “I believe that’s what you’d call last night.”

“No. I mean,” he pauses, the sorrow in his veins coming alive as the next word crawls forth from his throat. “ _Before_.”

_Before the fall, before the darkness, before I lost my sight and my king and my way. Before I lost you, because you were a part of my life before then, even if you were the enemy, the Chancellor of Niflheim. I know this, I know this now._

He opens his mouth to speak again, to give words to the truth, but suddenly Ardyn is before him, tenderly cupping his face in his hands and tilting his chin up, pressing his forehead to his own.  “I made a mistake. Forgive me.”

Ignis bursts into tears then, catches Ardyn’s wrists and holds him still, presses his face against those hands and sobs. _I know. I know. I_ remember _._

_I remember meeting you at the Quay, flirting with you so awkwardly that you couldn’t help but notice, touching you, encouraging you. I remember you taking me to a hotel, fucking me gently and not minding my inexperience, my confusion, my tears and my haughtiness. I remember you giving me your number, letting me come to you, teaching me new elemency spells and new fighting techniques and letting me decide when sex would happen. I remember you holding me when I wept over the fall of Insomnia, and I remember despairing over how I would lose you, too. I remember admiring you, adoring you, craving your affection and attention and trusting you with all my heart, telling you things I’d never told my friends as you taught me so much of the world. And I remember your occasional cruelty, your viciousness some nights as you railed against the Astrals and fate. I was afraid of you then. And I remember finding out you were the Chancellor of Niflheim. I remember loathing you, despising myself just as much as I hated you because I went back to you, again and again and again, and you did everything you could to make me forgive you._

_And I remember Altissia, when you took me to the most expensive restaurant in the city, the most expensive hotel, when you gifted me with a pair of daggers I couldn’t have afforded with all the money of Insomnia, when you kissed me and held me and then silenced me before I could tell you how I felt. I remember thinking that you knew, you knew something. And I remember fighting you, remember you asking me to go with you, remember refusing you. I remember wielding the ring not only to protect Noctis from you, but to protect my heart from you, because I had never felt so wounded in my life and I felt I would never truly live again._

_I remember it all, and I know what you did. I know that you wiped my memory in a desperate bid to heal my heartbreak, but in doing so all you did was bind me to your absence for all eternity. I know this, and I know you did it in love._

_I remember, and I know now you have completed me._

“I do, I do. I forgive you. I’ll always…”

There’s a hitch in Ardyn’s breath when he responds, a soft gasp as if he didn’t expect this, and his response is so soft that Ignis feels more than hears it. “ _Thank you.”_

And Ignis responds with the words he’s held in the lining of his ribcage since that day over ten years ago now. He says it quickly, before the pain can rob him of the voice and the memories he’s already lost once. “I love you.”

_I always have. I will forever._

But Ardyn. _Ardyn_. He denies him, with a huskiness in his voice that Ignis knows to be tears, and murmurs, “That’s unfortunate.”

And he is gone.

Ignis has never felt more alone than he does now. And still, _still_ he whispers into the void where Ardyn once stood. “ _I’ll always forgive you._ ”

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He senses someone sitting on the apartment steps, feels the sunlight bend and warp around a human figure in a way he hadn’t thought possible. The sun had risen nearly immediately, light and warmth a decade lost crawling through the lands within minutes of the sacrifice of the king. Sacrifice. Ignis is having difficulty calling it what it truly was. _Death_. There had been no body to collect, not of Noctis, not of Ardyn. The throne room empty, just as there stretched a gaping absence beneath Ignis’ ribcage. This newly awakened power, something akin to true sight, is not enough to make him draw breath again.

Aranea. She stands slowly, lazily yet gracefully and Ignis hears the tap of paper, a packet or envelope, on the stair railing. She speaks with hesitation, as if apologizing for what she must say. “He left a letter with me. Before the dawn.”

Ignis only nods, unsure of what to say. _He_. Ardyn. In one moment, Ignis had lost the two people who mattered most to him in the world, and he still feels as if he will awaken from this nightmare. So when he speaks, it is not with accusation in his voice but resignation. “You read it.”

She laughs. “He didn’t even bother sealing it because he knew I would. You’re something else, kid, you know?”

Ignis holds his hand out, feels a thin envelope pressed into his fingers. “Thanks,” he whispers, and then he steps around her, walks up the stairs to his apartment and unlocks the door. The last time he was here, he had a king and a lover. Now he has nothing but a world he must repair without his heart.

He almost doesn’t open it. Instead he sits on the edge of his bed and fights the tears. Ardyn hadn’t acknowledged him during that final battle. He hadn’t expected him to; the older man had even told him that he wouldn’t, but it had still wounded him. They both had a role to fill in the end of the world, in the dawn of a new era, and it was the fault of neither that they were born into these roles on opposite ends of the light. But once, _once_ , Ardyn had caught his eye and smiled.

And Ignis understood what was in that smile. Relief that he was finally going to die and be freed from the curse. Gratitude that Ignis had been by his side until the end. And something more.

It’s this memory that drives him to open it, flick the envelop open and pull out the single sheet of thick parchment.

Raised ink. The kind he can read. The kind he first read ten years and three weeks ago. The kind Ardyn taught him how to create. He knows now that this is not the first time Ardyn has left him a message.

There’s only a single line, and Ignis smiles absently as he realizes this. It took the man over two thousand years to realize that sometimes, a few words mean more than a speech.

_(you are beloved until the stars die)_

Signed Ardyn _Lucis Caelum_.

The heart understands what the mind could not, and as his fingers trace over the raised name again and again, he weeps.

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End file.
